Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

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I was not at home for a few days. She was alone. A girl came to give her food and water everyday, stayed with her for an hour or two. But it definitely did not make Minu the philosopher happy. Since I came back she made my body her bed, my face her pillow. She has her own bed, she has three soft blankets, pillows. But she doesn’t want any of those things. She wants to sit on my body, stand on my body, walk on my body and sleep on my body. She just doesn’t want to leave me. And she doesn’t want me to leave her again. When she needs to pee or potty, she runs to her toilet and comes back to my body.

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Poland has a law that says that all animals must be stunned before they are culled and the procedure must be performed at a slaughter house.

Now, Poland’s Muslim community decided to refrain from the ancient tradition of animal sacrifice for the Eid al-Adha holiday amid protests by animal rights activists and a ban on halal slaughter.

Nobody is allowed to cut the throats of conscious animals in Poland. Muslims and Jewish should buy slaughter-house-meat as much as they want.

Slaughtering conscious animals should be illegal in every country in the world, not only in Poland. And no one or no community should have the right to practice slaughtering animals using illegall methods only because they have the right to practice their religion. Many religions allows slavery, child marriage, polygamy, rape in marriage, amputation for theft/robbery, killing infidels but no sane country would allow anyone to practice those in the name of religion. Why should slaughtering conscious animals be allowed?

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I bought dozens of bananas and went to Dalhousie road in Delhi. Lots of beautiful, elegant, intelligent monkeys ran towards me to get bananas. I tried to distribute bananas among them in equal shares. But it was impossible to make them stand in a queue. I did not want alpha males to snatch bananas from oppressed monkeys.

They love bananas. Wish I could feed them everyday. But the traffic police around the road was not happy with me, they asked me to stop feeding monkeys. I didn’t know that it was illegal to feed monkeys on the road. Why should love and care be illegal? They don’t find food in the jungle, so they came to the city. Why shouldn’t we feed them when there is almost no traffic and they are very hungry!

He is eating one, protecting another.

He got 3 bananas. But his hands are not free. So he is peeling the banana with his mouth. They are smarter than me.

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Welcome to Earth, Olinguito!
From now on, we will call your species Olinguito.
Don’t you like the name? It does not matter you like it or not, we will call you Olinguito anyway.
You are living in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. Your colour is reddish-brown. Quite a common colour for the animals living in those forests. You have a cute teddy bear face. Do you know that you have a cute teddy bear face, cutie? You are about 14-inches long and your tail is also 14-inches long. It makes you look so beautiful! You weigh about 2 pounds. So tiny little raccoon! You are the smallest member of the raccon family. You guys were there, but we didn’t know that you were there. We say we have just ‘discovered’ you. You can ask, ‘were we covered?’ No, you were not covered. But you should know that we look like giants but our brains are not yet giants. We do not know about every little thing of earth. We still have limitations. But you should be happy that we are very excited to find you because you are not mere insects, you are mammals. You have hair, you give birth to babies, you breastfeed your children. You are like us!

We never saw animals like you, at least not in those forests. We saw Olingo, your cousins, but not Olinguito, not you. You are the first new species of carnivore that we have discovered in the western hemisphere in 35 years. Kristofer Helgen, a Smithsonian zoologist is the man behind to find you. Don’t worry, we will not kill you off. We will force some of you to leave the forests, but promise we will take care of you. And we will not let you extinct in near future. Personally I do not like carnivore. Wish you were not flesh eating animals. I know you are like cats, dogs, bears etc. Oh no, I love cats. I can love you too if you do not bite me.
Enjoy life, Olinguito! See you soon in zoos!

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We would have done the same if we were hungry. Why do they need to steal food? Hindus have a monkey god. Monkey worshipers should provide enough food for monkeys that live in the monkey temples.

Some men in India and Pakistan force monkeys to be their slaves. This monkey business is so ridiculous. Monkeys are chained. They have to play clowns to make people laugh.They have to do everything those monkey abusers ask them to do. I do not think monkeys are even given a piece of banana after their whole day’s hard work.

This must be stopped. Free the monkeys. Let them live happily in their forests! They will live in the forests with many dangerous animals, but those animals are obviously less dangerous than humans.

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Two new studies, both published in Science, have highlighted the importance of social learning and culture in two very different animals: vervet monkeys and whales. The study with vervet monkeys is unique in that it’s the first time that non-human primates in the wild have been shown to adopt a local tradition, instead of using their own individual knowledge. In humans, we know that we will often adopt what other individuals are doing when we enter a new group. For example, when you travel to a foreign country you might copy where the locals are eating, as you presume that their local knowledge is better than your own, or perhaps just because you want to fit in. It seems that vervet monkeys might do the same thing.

The same vervet monkeys adopted the local culture of Caribbean islands soon after they were brought from West Africa 300 years ago. They were brought along with slaves who were forced to work on the sugar plantations. Monkeys tasted alcohol by eating fermented sugar canes left in the fields. Today they drink at the local bars. Some of them are really addicted to alcohol. Vervet monkeys are just like us.

Science amazes me!
The fossil is not 10 million or 20 million years old, it is 190 million years old!

The study reveals how dinosaur embryos grew, developed and moved around in their eggs.

Organic collagen was discovered in bone. Paleontologists believe they will be able to recover collagen from the tissues in the future for more analyses. Finding complex proteins in a 190-million-year-old fossil gives a lot of hope for finding it in other extinct animals.